Achille Mbembe
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479829682
- eISBN:
- 9781479839681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479829682.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Mbembe discusses the difficulty of defining “who is African” based on race given the continent’s long history as both the starting and end point of population movements and cultural transmissions. ...
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Mbembe discusses the difficulty of defining “who is African” based on race given the continent’s long history as both the starting and end point of population movements and cultural transmissions. Addressing formations of new solidarities within the transformations taking places across African cultures and identities, Mbembe draws upon that history to posit the possibility of a transnational “Afropolitan” culture that embraces difference as it engages with the world at large.Less
Mbembe discusses the difficulty of defining “who is African” based on race given the continent’s long history as both the starting and end point of population movements and cultural transmissions. Addressing formations of new solidarities within the transformations taking places across African cultures and identities, Mbembe draws upon that history to posit the possibility of a transnational “Afropolitan” culture that embraces difference as it engages with the world at large.
Emma Dabiri
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479829682
- eISBN:
- 9781479839681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479829682.003.0016
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Emma Dabiri critiques mainstream modes of Afropolitanism as a type of imperialism of cultural consumerism capitalized upon by Western markets and as primarily concerned with commodifying “African ...
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Emma Dabiri critiques mainstream modes of Afropolitanism as a type of imperialism of cultural consumerism capitalized upon by Western markets and as primarily concerned with commodifying “African flavored” versions of Western conventions and forms. She contemplates the alternative of an Afropolitanism beyond such elite consumerism that would be guided by African precolonial modernity, epistemologies, and forms of creativity.Less
Emma Dabiri critiques mainstream modes of Afropolitanism as a type of imperialism of cultural consumerism capitalized upon by Western markets and as primarily concerned with commodifying “African flavored” versions of Western conventions and forms. She contemplates the alternative of an Afropolitanism beyond such elite consumerism that would be guided by African precolonial modernity, epistemologies, and forms of creativity.
Ashleigh Harris
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781479829682
- eISBN:
- 9781479839681
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479829682.003.0019
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Ashleigh Harris critiques the tendency to locate Afropolitanism in African expatriate and diaspora culture, particularly as a culture of elite consumerism. Asking if “Afropolitanism” is a useful ...
More
Ashleigh Harris critiques the tendency to locate Afropolitanism in African expatriate and diaspora culture, particularly as a culture of elite consumerism. Asking if “Afropolitanism” is a useful term, Harris argues that without it, the ways in which economic inequalities shape Africans’ experience of worldliness would largely remain invisible. Beyond the consumer culture of the elite, she contends, Africans do not enjoy equal cosmopolitan freedoms as citizens of the world. In her analysis of Brian Chikwava’s novel Harare North as a dramatization of the cosmopolitan experience of being African in the world, Harris arrives at a conclusion that seems similar to Bender’s conception of the cosmopolitan as someone who is at home nowhere rather than everywhere, but is more literal: the Afropolitanism Chikwava expresses in his novel is an actual state of homelessness, rather than the possibility of being at home in the world.Less
Ashleigh Harris critiques the tendency to locate Afropolitanism in African expatriate and diaspora culture, particularly as a culture of elite consumerism. Asking if “Afropolitanism” is a useful term, Harris argues that without it, the ways in which economic inequalities shape Africans’ experience of worldliness would largely remain invisible. Beyond the consumer culture of the elite, she contends, Africans do not enjoy equal cosmopolitan freedoms as citizens of the world. In her analysis of Brian Chikwava’s novel Harare North as a dramatization of the cosmopolitan experience of being African in the world, Harris arrives at a conclusion that seems similar to Bender’s conception of the cosmopolitan as someone who is at home nowhere rather than everywhere, but is more literal: the Afropolitanism Chikwava expresses in his novel is an actual state of homelessness, rather than the possibility of being at home in the world.
